Page 18 of Billionaire Bodyguard Summer

She’s there. At the foot of the steps.

Mia.

NotMia, I have to remind myself.

She said she would come.

But I still wasn’t sure. I couldn’t let myself have that much hope.

She rushes up the steps to help me, but I wave her off even though I could use her help. Even though I want nothing more than to have her hands on me. The primordial, macho part of me is hurt even more than the rest of me. Sore and smartingfrom the fact that she had to rescue me, instead of the other way around.

“I’m okay,” I say, though I’m not.

I was comfortable with the other way around.

Stop being such a fossil.But it’s not that easy.

“Listen, Armin—”

“I know.” I don’t want her to apologize to me.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t…”

“You don’t have to explain. The other agent told me. Because of the nature of the case.” The other agent said a lot of things.

Was I sure I wasn’t purposefully being used as bait?

Did I think she’d targeted me, as a sheriff, as Harvey’s rival?

And then, about a week ago, Agent Rossi leaned a little too close, and put her hand on mine in a way that suggested a different relationship entirely, and it cast her questions in a suspicious light. But there was no doubt in my mind that I’d been pursuing Mia this entire time, and not the other way around.

I was such a fool. All this time trying to protect her. It never occurred to me that she’d been trying to protect me.

“Yeah. The nature of the case,” she echoes. She only shakes her head and looks sad.

I want to reach out to her, but I stop myself. I don’t know if that’s what she wants. “Walk me to my car?”

“Sure,” she says. “Are you really alright to walk, though?”

Her voice is different. More business. MoreFBI, I suppose.

“I’ll make it,” I say.

She turns to take the sidewalk to the hospital parking lot.

“Not there,” I say. “I had them park it on the beach lot.”

She raises her eyebrows. But she sticks with me, heads towards the beach.

I know she was busy with the case. Prohibited from visiting me, is what Agent Rossi said. Still, I was haunted by the absenceof her, and my new knowledge of her identity, and I couldn’t think about anything else.

I remember what it was like to be a small-town cop. Being a Fed has to be a thousand times worse, the paperwork every time you fire your weapon.

And Mia did it for me.

The voice inside that enjoys fomenting mental anguish:She was only working this whole time. It had nothing to do with me.

And, what’s more, she’s not Mia.